As the Epson Tour prepares to launch into their 2026 schedule in March, we met with the Chief Business and Operations Officer, Jody Brothers, to learn about the tour’s goals heading into the new season.
The Epson Tour plays a crucial role in women’s golf. They are the qualifying tour for the LPGA, which means many of the star golfers you see on television today have tested their game and bested the best to earn their spot on the LPGA Tour after one or more seasons on the Epson Tour. For the second year in a row, 15 players have graduated from the Epson Tour to play at the highest level. This is a testament to the tour’s growth under Brothers, as there were only 10 players graduating in 2023, his first year in his position.
Fairway to Green’s Kelly Okun had the opportunity to ask Brothers about his priorities for the 2026 season and why he is one of these athletes’ biggest fans.
Brothers divided his 2026 priorities into three pillars: sponsorship, content and education. Sponsorship is the lifeblood of the tour, and readers will see below how far a dollar goes on the Epson Tour. Content creation is crucial because the Epson Tour doesn’t have any television time. Last but not least, educating fans about the tour and its players is paramount to start achieving equity in golf.
When sponsorships are mentioned in golf, purses may come to mind first, but the money goes far beyond the final prize each week. In fact, sponsorships help the players tee it up in the first place. “We want to continue to lower entry fees. Thanks to Epson as our lead partner, we’ve taken them from $500 down to $350,” said Brothers. “Reliance Matrix and Accenture have contributed to that, but I won’t be happy until they’re at least on par with what the LPGA players pay each week, which I think is $200.”
$150 may not sound like much to the average fan, but to these players, it’s everything. It’s gas for their car to get to the next event, it’s a week of hot meals, it’s a safer hotel room. These women are putting it all on the line to chase their dreams, so making the tournaments affordable has a huge impact on how many of these talented women can continue to play and inspire the next generation of golfers.
Epson replaced Symetra as the tour’s title sponsor in 2022. They signed a five-year agreement, and Brothers and his team have been working diligently to renew the partnership. “We’ve been working on it all year. As you might imagine, these are not simple agreements, and it takes a lot of approvals,” said Brothers. “I think we’re heading in the right direction.”
When it comes to content creation, Brothers commends the tour’s media team – Ally Lutter, Isaiah Bell, Carly Haines and Hunter Knarr – on their hard work and innovation. Without airtime to share their athletes’ stories and sponsors’ brands, the team has gotten creative.
“I was really proud of the team last year,” said Brothers. “They created a second year of a docuseries called Dream Chasing. I’m really proud of the first two seasons we put together because it really, I think, shines a light on just how difficult it is to make it in professional golf and you get to know some really cool people that are chasing that journey.”
Brothers continued, “I’d like to keep pushing them to create more and more compelling content that allows our athletes a platform to sort of allow the world to get to know them. And also it shines a spotlight on our sponsors. Since we’re not televised, it’s the best opportunity for us to tell the Epson Tour story.”
The Epson Tour and Fairway to Green have this philosophy in common: content truly is at the center of growing women’s golf. Brothers emphasized this point, saying, “The better we can do at storytelling about the path and the journey of the athletes, the better prepared they are, I think, for the next stage, and the world gets to know them a little bit early. It’s a revenue-generator as well. We can put sponsorship against it. We can monetize on our YouTube platform.
“It doesn’t create a lot of revenue for us, but every dollar counts,” said Brothers. “We invest all those monies right back into things like subsidizing purses and growing and creating better athlete amenities and doing fun things on property like we did this year where we added digital leaderboards and tried to get the events to feel a little bit more like an LPGA-style event.”
The mission behind content creation leads into the third priority, education. “It is shocking to me, having worked for the PGA Tour for so many years and on the Korn Ferry Tour team, everybody knew what the Korn Ferry Tour was,” said Brothers. “Not that many people really know what the Epson Tour is, and I’m tired of having to tell golfers that the Epson Tour is the female equivalent of the Korn Ferry Tour. I want them to be able to know instinctively what the Epson Tour is and what our purpose is.”
With this trifecta as the goal for 2026, the Epson Tour looks to make a huge impact in women’s golf this upcoming season. While growing the women’s game is important on principle, there are other returns on investment worth investigating.
Brothers shares the Epson Tour’s pro-ams as an example. “I look at the pro-am experience and just the way that the athletes create a connection with the amateurs,” said Brothers. “I’ve played in both [the women’s and men’s pro-ams]. They might be on their best behavior when I’m around because I run the tour, but I just see how hard they try and how engaging they are and how they look at every amateur and they say they recognize that they’ve spent a lot of money to play at this pro-am. They want to make sure, for the most part, that they have an incredible experience. And I saw that on the men’s side, but just not nearly as frequently and as deeply as the women do.
“So, it makes my job a lot easier when there’s a great pro-am experience because that’s the core of our title sponsorship deal,” continued Brothers. “I mean, we create a lot of brand exposure for brands that sign up to be title sponsors. But where it really happens and comes to life is at that Wednesday pro-am when they bring their best guests out or their best clients out and their top salespeople, and they just have this experience and it’s like, man, we had no idea how fun this was going to be. It just helps these companies create such a great bond with their guests, and that’s largely because it’s a great golf course – it’s a fun experience – but the athletes are great hosts along the way.”
When asked why Brothers switched to championing women’s golf, his simple answer was, “The women are a lot cooler.” Brothers had spent some time with the PGA Tour and the Korn Ferry Tour on their business affairs team. “I was just really captivated by the journey of the up-and-coming golfer or the player who had seen greatness on the PGA Tour and then had to come back to the Korn Ferry Tour to kind of earn their way back. And I also saw on the women’s side just a lot of opportunity,” said Brothers.
“I was constantly calling my counterpart at the LPGA and sending [sponsorship] leads her direction. And I thought, you know, if the LPGA ever called, I’d be interested in making a move because I was intrigued by the shift in interest in the women’s game,” said Brothers. “And just in my three years here now, I’ve really seen a lot of growth and a lot of opportunity, and I still think we’re in a very early stage of massive growth that’s coming our direction.
“I do mean what I say about the athletes being cooler. I just think our athletes try harder. They are more engaging with our sponsors and – no offense to the men, they do a fine job – but the women just do it better.”
